What is the difference between a high side

and low side driver?

I don not fully grasp the difference between the term High side driver and Low side driver. In
specific yet, layman's terms, what do these terms mean?

2 years ago
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It refers to how you drive a load. High side means your switch is between the plus power and the
load; low side means the switch is between the load and negative power.
Say you have a lamp driven by a 12V battery. You attach one end of the lamp to the +12V and
one to the negative terminal to make it go. To turn it off, you need to add a switch to the circuit.
For a high side driver, the transistor (switch) is between the +12 and the lamp. So, when the
driver is off, the lamp is at ground potential, with little or no current flow. PNP or P channel
MOS transistors are used for high side switches. I like high side drivers, but they are harder to
do, requiring more components when the logic level and drive voltage don't match, and P type
transistors have about 3x more resistance than similar N type.
For a low side driver, the transistor (switch) is between the lamp and ground or the negative line.
This is considered less safe, because the lamp has +12V on it even when turned off. NPN or N
channel MOS are used for low side switches.

A half-bridge driver will have 2 switches (transistors, MOSFET's, whatever). In the case
of a typical MOSFET half-bridge, the high-side switch will have it's drain connected to
the V-plus voltage, and it's source connected to both the output and the drain of the lowside transistor. The source of the low-side MOSFET will be connected to common.
http://www.irf.com/product-info/datashee
This driver has both a low and a high-side driver in one package. The low-side driver
output ("LO") is referenced to COM, like the low-side switch. But the high-side output
("HO") is referenced to Vs, and Vs is isolated from the rest of the chip - in other words, it
floats, and in the example of this driver IC, it's able to float safely by as much as +200
volts from the rest of the chip. This is necessary because when the low-side switch is
turned on, the source of the high-side switch is basically connected to COM, but when
the low-side switch is off, the source lead of the high-side switch might be as much as

nearly +200V. And this is what it needs to do in order to control the high-side switch
correctly. Get it? The HO output will always be referenced to the floating ground Vs, but
the 2 together are free to go wherever they need to.
Notice the diode feeding the Vb terminal and cap? The diode with the cap make a charge
pump - whenever the high transistor is off, the cap will be charged thru the diode via the
Vcc. Once the low-side transistor turns off (and the high on), the diode will be reversebiased, blocking current, and altho the voltage from Vb to Vs will still be equal to Vcc,
the voltage from Vs to COM may be +200, and the voltage from Vb to COM may be say
+215, if Vcc is 15V and V+ is +200.

Note: In most apps, the 2 MOSFET outputs shown in the "typical connection" schematic
are tied together, and then go into either an inductor if a power supply or Class D amp, or
into a motor winding.